


Strangling Fruit

by mutationalfalsetto



Category: True Detective
Genre: Implied Relationships, Implied Violence, M/M, Southern Reach AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 17:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3618996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutationalfalsetto/pseuds/mutationalfalsetto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets from Area X featuring the Biologist. Southern Reach AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strangling Fruit

By the time Central comes to collect him he’s a mess of a human being. His daughter’s been in the ground going on three months and he’s hauled himself up in a small cabin in a tiny town on a remote coast, drinking away the grant money that he continues to apply for despite the alarming rate with which he is being turned away.

 

“ _We aren’t seeing enough data to justify funding_ ,” one representative says, voice tinny over the only landline in town. Rust doesn’t bother with cell phones.

 

“You aren’t seeing enough data because I’m not being adequately funded,” he says matter-of-factly, as if his last generous benefactor isn’t paying for the whiskey in his glass. “Tide pool ecosystems are grossly under-researched.” His voice lacks conviction.

 

It’s a tired argument. The faceless voice hangs up. He doesn’t feel anything.

 

He returns to the tide pool the next day, bottle in hand, and gets so drunk that it’s a wonder he doesn’t fall into one of the little communities.

 

Staggering back to his car, he crushes a number of starfish.

 

Rust returns home the following week.

 

\---------

 

When he tells Claire that he signed on to the expedition, she doesn’t respond. If it were anyone else, he would wonder if she hadn’t heard him, but her gaze remains on her hands and the absence of her wedding ring tells him everything he needs to know.

 

When Central comes for him, he’s waiting on the front porch of an empty house with a graveyard of cigarette butts at his feet.

 

As he gets to his feet he imagines, briefly, small arms wrapping around his leg. High-pitched laughter, a childish plea of ‘ _don’t go, daddy_ ’ that vanishes as soon as he takes that first step onto the concrete.

 

His daughter’s been in the ground going on four months, and he still hasn’t really buried her.

 

\---------

 

The Psychologist tells them to _trust the process_ and he feels dizzy, disoriented for a moment that lasts up until they cross through the designated entry point and through the border.

 

After that point, he experiences what he can only describe as ‘paranoia’.

 

The land beyond the entry point is dark and the air is heavy. There are no definitive landmarks, no lighthouse to guide their way. Shadows dart in and out of their path and he feels eyes boring into the back of his uniform. At the front of the group, he notes the Psychologist’s tense posture, the way she jumps at every sound.

 

Rust feels as though he is being stretched in a hundred directions all at once, and yet as they continue for what feels like miles he is aware of how small the space is. On more than one occasion, he feels compelled to crawl in order to combat the sensation of the passageway getting steadily tighter. He can _see_ the breath of his teammates clouding the area around him and it chokes him.

 

Leviathan move in the distance.

 

Not for the first time since his arrival at Central, he aches for a cigarette. For the first time, he wonders if his lungs could expand enough to take in the proper amount of oxygen, let alone anything else. He hears laughter, the soft sounds exploding in pastel blues and yellows behind his eyes and wonders if he’s dying.

 

When they break through the border to Area X, he hurriedly wipes his eyes.

 

\---------

 

It is a tower for no other reason than it cannot possibly be anything else. Even buried miles beneath the earth, it is distinctly tower-like in its construction.

 

Rust examines what appears to be a line of text winding its way down the wall. “I’m gonna go down a ways,” he says to no one in particular.

 

The Psychologist looks as if she might protest, but only opens her mouth to tell him “be safe”. The emphasis is odd, and her tone of voice does not align with her words.

 

Shaking off a wave of dizziness, Rust descends.

 

\---------

 

He does not sleep.

 

Page after page of his journal contain the same phrase, repeated indefinitely. _Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share…_

 

The words burn themselves into his eyelids, a blinding light that bleeds into his surroundings until all he sees is the outlines of trees and his fellow expedition members.

 

“Anything interestin’ down there?” The voice of the surveyor.

 

Rust returns, for a moment, to the tower. To the steps and the moist air and the walls that move steadily in and out as if the entire structure is breathing. He returns to the text that winds its way down, layer after layer.

 

_Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner…_

 

The text glows and moves with every undulation of the walls. The closer he gets, the more he realizes that it is not just the walls that are moving. Whatever makes up the words

 

_Where lies the strangling fruit…_

 

is living. He lifts a vial, positioning it just below the dot of the ‘i’ and, using the tip of his pencil, attempts to scrape off a portion of the plant

 

_I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead_

 

The surveyor’s voice comes to him in bits and pieces. “-- _if you don’t wanna talk about it I won’t make you but it’s my job t’measure the thing, and—_ “

 

“Just a lot of fungus,” he chokes.

 

 

\---------

 

 

He feels someone watching him when he’s studying some thistles near base camp. After several moments he turns around, surprised to find that the clearing is empty save for a heron.

 

The bird stares at him for a moment longer, before taking flight.

 

Rust turns back to the thistles, feeling ill. The heron’s eyes were human.

 

\---------

 

The brightness grows. A small flame that licks at his insides until he feels his entire body burning with it, like a fever.

 

_where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner_

 

The Psychologist begins to look at him strangely. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches her mouthing things, whispering under her breath. Quiet commands, strange intonations that make the brightness burn hot and bright. When she speaks to the others, those same intonations cause them to go slack; their eyes are empty while she delivers her instructions.

 

\---------

 

He does not kill the Psychologist in the same way he does not kill the Archaeologist.

 

But where he watches the Psychologist fall from the top of the lighthouse, screaming her commands even with her final breaths, the Archaeologist has no say in his death.

 

Because by the time he sees the Archaeologist at base camp, he is already something else. The body turns, the movements halting and unnatural. The jaw opens wide, unhinged as if to swallow him whole and the eyes are the same as the heron, as the freshwater dolphins and the deer that dart across their paths.

 

Rust does not have time to think, merely grabs the hunting knife that Central issued him on the final days of the program. As the Archaeologist’s teeth—fangs, really—sink into his shoulder he forces the knife up and into the creature’s throat.

 

Stumbling away from base camp, he feels the brightness ebb.

 

\---------

 

The Surveyor looks like a ‘Marty’.

 

Rust introduces himself in return, rules about names beyond the border be damned because they’re probably going to die whether Area X knows or not.

 

He stands at the mouth of the tower, breathes in the rotting honey smell that makes him gag and the brightness throb. Without turning to look back at Marty, he descends.

 

_I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead_

 

\---------

 

_writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden—_

 

“Why’re you still writing in that thing?”

 

_shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness_

Rust pauses. He hasn’t lifted his pencil once. “Keepin’ a record.”

 

Marty doesn’t look at what he has written, and Rust is thankful. His companion looks out at the horizon, uneasy.

 

“Maybe… let’s head to the lighthouse tomorrow, again.”

 

They settle as the howling rises from the swamp.

 

\---------

 

Marty tells him about his life back home like he has something to return to. Like they’ll make it out alive. He talks about his wife, his two little girls, and Rust listens.

 

He doesn’t tell Marty about Sophia

 

_where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall_

 

Until they’re standing on top of the journals, thousands of pages of lives that disappeared into Area X and he’s not thinking about his daughter who’s been dead for months now and he’s not thinking about the bloodstains on the stairs or the fresh set of footprints leading up to the trap door he’s

 

_I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness_

 

And the brightness pulses, bright and alive and with Marty watching he takes up the blade.

 

“ _Keeps it occupied for a while._ ”

 

\---------

Rust tastes the panic in Marty’s kiss, the desperation and confusion and _why can’t you cross with me_. The brightness explodes behind his eyes, an infinite script that threatens to engulf his body and he thinks of the heron, standing in the field with its human eyes and the rabbits and the creature lurking in the marsh. Thinks of the crawler at the bottom of the tower writing its sermon for an audience that isn’t allowed to leave

 

_and there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their deeth shall devour and sustain_

and Marty is pulling him toward the border and for a moment he thinks that it will work, can hear the other man babbling something that’s meant to be a reassurance but at the final second

 

a

 

disconnect

 

\---------

 

Rust Cohle embraces it, whatever it is.

 

\---------

 

 

Although Rust approaches Central with the end of the world at his heels and the brightness beating a steady rhythm in his chest he does not die.

 

_And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains._

**Author's Note:**

> I would appreciate any feedback, especially those regarding characterization. I feel like my Rust and Marty could probably use some work, and anything that can kind of get me moving in the right direction would be great.
> 
> For anyone who might be curious, the italicized text is something from the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer, which I highly recommend to everyone.


End file.
